When I'm Down
by Not An Infant
Summary: Another boring day at the Jeffersonian. Well, not really. Better than it sounds. I'm serious.


**Title: When I'm Down**

**Author: Not An infant**

**Summary: Another boring day in the Jeffersonian. Not really.**

**Disclaimer: The song, "Roses," by Georgia Anne Muldrow, is not mine. I'm not that creative. And neither is Bones. Duh.**

**A/N: In this alternate world, Zach is freed from the asylum when he agrees to let Sweets tell everybody that he didn't actually kill the lobbyist. And Cam is dating him now. (Yeah. Ahem.) So I kinda let the song take me away on a creative ride. Hope you like it. Enjoy.**

Another boring day in the Jeffersonian Institute. Surrounded by x-rays, bones, beakers, trays, bones, blue lab coats, bones, other doctors, and bones...

Yeah. just like any other day. Only there was no case to solve. Brennan sighed a little as she rested her elbows on the empty examination table. Angela was off on a date with Hodgins (again), Booth was taking Parker out to the movies, Zach was celebrating his first night out of the asylum (after a month-long trial following his confession of never having KILLED the lobbyist) at Wong Foo's. His girlfriend, Camille (she still could not believe it) was footing the bill before taking him to her place to move in. Brennan had nothing to do, nowhere to go, and nobody to spend the night with.

These were the times that she wished she had Sully with her to keep the crushing loneliness away for the night. Her mind drifted to those long and fun-filled nights to laughter, sex, wine and food, when she was actually glad to go to sleep...so he would stop fondling her.

Okay, maybe not so much _Sully_ in particular as just _someone_ to come home to everywhere she looked, everybody had that but her.

"Dr. Brennan!"

Cam was jogging through the door, holding a CD case in her hand. Her high bun was in danger of falling out of its many pins as she huffed and puffed in her blue stilettos.

"Cam?" Brennan replied in surprise. "Shouldn't you be out at the Checker Box with Zach?"

"I know, he's waiting out at the car," she said breathlessly. "I had to give you this first. I don't know what music you like, but this is a classic, so I thought you'd enjoy it."

"Uh...what--"

"Let me explain," Saroyan interrupted. "I know you don't have a place to go, really. I know it's always everyone else going out to a place and you don't want to 'impose' your company on us, even though we tell you hundreds of times to not worry about it. I'm not here to try and force you into anything. But I _have _been in your situation before, and I had a way to feel better." She held up the CD Case, holding a single white disc inside. "It's not much, but it did something for me, and I can be sure it does something for you."

Tempe blinked, her mouth slightly parted in dazed shock.

Saroyan smiled meekly.

"Just be sure to have a pencil and paper with you." She set down the CD on the lab table. "Good night."

Tempe broke in urgently. "Camille, I have no idea what you're talking about--"

"Just listen to it," Saroyan hissed, a little annoyed. "And by the way, I draw glasses. Who would've known, huh?" She backed away, almost tripping over her heels as she went running back out of the building.

"Camille! _Camille! DR. SAROYAN!" _

No answer. Brennan sat straight now, her eyes nervously darting around her. Save for the night guards, she was completely alone.

She was _utterly _alone.

Brennan stared at the CD in her hands. It was quite unlike Dr. Saroyan to give Brennan something or say something non-related to work. She knew that Saroyan was pulling her leg, but if she knew the anthropologist as much as she should, she would know that Temperance Brennan could handle anything without the help of a CD and writing set.

And yet, while she was internally bringing up her self-confidance, her hands snatched the CD and ran towards her office. They rummaged through her desk drawers until they found a number 2 pencil and a notepad the size of a pair of hands. She saw her hands took the CD and placed it in the small black radio player on her windowsill.

Pressing play.

A raspy woman's voice stretched over quiet piano chords.

_When I`m down,_

_I just draw some roses,_

_On a pretty piece of paper,_

_With my red stabilo pencil,_

_Halfway through,_

_I feel so much better,_

_I imagine happiness,_

_And it runs right through me, such amazing beauty..._

Maybe it was because she was so desperate not to feel lonely anymore that she took to the chair at her desk and began to trace invisible lines on the paper.

At first they were just squiggly lines and misshaped circles, but as the song progressed, she found herself diagraming mandibles, phalanges, and ulna's. The hollow bone sockets of eyes and the intricate bones of the finger, layer with captions on all the miniature bones that the untrained eye could not see. There were even crude but vivid human parts, disconnected, but very vivid.

And as her eyes observed her hand whizzing like little windmills create little pictures, her heart began to she'd itself of the weights she had been carrying night after endless night. She even undid the the ponytail that was adding stress to her scalp.

_You don't have to,_

_Cut up no roses,_

_Please just leave them living,_

_Got my pencil,_

_Got pretty paper,_

_Please don't worry, we're forgiven..._

She let out a petrified yelp jumping so badly that the pen dropped out of her hands and clattered loudly onto the floor.

"Booth!"

Booth was standing in the doorway of her office, his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. His prominent features were currently relaxed into a politely confused expression. His neatly crapped hair was slightly windswept due to the windy weather of early March. His cheeks were flushed from the cold, or maybe that was just because he was so hot that he was physically burning.

Yeah, see, Brennan had long before given up the resistance against her feelings for him. Now, she rather welcomed those thoughts with a graceful resignation; as long as he never found out, she could relish in the warmth of these ticklish, child-like psychological (and physical) affections towards her eye-candy of a

partner.

Wait, did she just say "eye-candy?" Damn that Angela.

"May I ask what you are doing here?" he asked. "All alone." He paused. "In your office. After your work is done." His eyes traveled to the radio. "With a song playing." He noticed her notepad. "And a piece of paper."

She would have been flustered a few years ago, hiding the notepad and turning off the radio dismissively as she could under the embarrassment. But that was the old times, where Booth was but a stranger to her.

"I'm following a technique suggested by Dr. Saroyan to induce endorphins when they're low in amount," she explained, smiling naturally. Everything felt natural with him. She even forgot her real name with him around; she was only Bones. Naturally.

Booth looked toward the radio, where the mystery women was still singing.

"Hmmm....different sound than what I listen to normally," he said thoughtfully. "Sounds familiar, but...I can't remember! Damn it!" he snapped his fingers in mock-frusturation. She thought it looked remarkably sexy.

He sat down in the chair in across from her desk in a casual, slumped style.

"Booth..." she said slowly. "What about your plans this evening? With Parker? I mean--"

"Change of plans," he interrupted curtly.

_Rebecca._

"Rebecca decided to take him for the evening with Brent to go to some lame event with clowns and corn dogs."

Keyword: clowns.

"So, because you didn't want to shoot another clown," Bones put out, trying to piece it together.

"No. He-uh-" Booth suddenly looked ashamed of himself. "Parker suggested that I let Brent take care of him tonight."

"Those exact words?"

He nodded.

"Are you serious?" Bones squeaked, absolutely appalled.

He nodded again.

"Wow," she said softly. Then after seeing the look on his face, she added, "I'm so sorry, Booth. I know how much it hurts, being rejected in any kind of way."

She knew; she was being rejected in the most friendly way possible; unintentionally.

Booth shrugged, playing Mister Nonchalant for a while, though it wasn't working very well. "Ah, kid's a kid. He wants to be able to do his own thing, so...I'll be okay for one night."

Bones smiled sympathetically. Then she frowned.

"That sill doesn't explain why you're here, in the Jeffersonian, when you could be anywhere else. I know you don't like it there as much as the diner," she joked half-heartedley.

He blushed, before saying in an embarrassed voice, "I--I looked for you, in your house, at first, but...um...well, obviously, you weren't there."

Bones felt her heart flutter against her throat. _He came out looking for me?_

"Did you use the key or did you break down the door?" was all that she came out with. _Ugh, you idiot! You sound so rude._

Booth didn't answer, and she assumed the worst. Well, at least she'll know why her home was demolished.

"So I'll have a broken door to go home to," she said slowly. "Nice," she added sarcastically, nodding as if she liked the idea of that.

"I didn't break it down," Booth laughed. "I just wanted to see how you'd react."

They chuckled together, enjoying the easiness of feeling good. Then it was silent.

"So..." Booth began, raising his eyebrows. "Whatcha doing?"

Bones grinned softly.

"I'm just drawing."

Booth got up from his chair to come around to her desk and look at the notepad.

"Hmm...bones," he observed. "It never leaves you, huh?"

Years ago she would have taken offense at his remark, shooed him out, and remark, shooed him out, and thrown the notepad in the garbage. Instead, she shook her head in agreement.

"Never leaves me, Booth...never leaves me."

"So basically, you're doing what the song is asking, except you're drawing bones, right?"

"Yep," said Bones.

"And it's helping you feel better?" Booth looked incredulous.

"I find that working with bones in the lab makes me feel confidence about the importance of my contributions to the world," Bones explained, feeling childishly bashful. "But I'm drawing them for fun. It's something I familiarize with, something that induces endorphins--"

"Something that makes you happy?" Booth interrupted, resting a hand on the small of her back.

For a moment, she help his probing gaze. Then she smiled. "Yes, Booth. It makes me happy."

_But not as happy as I am now, with you._

She looked in the nearest cabinet in her desk, pulled out a pencil, a pad, and carried them, along with her own, to the couch area, sitting them on the glass table before straightening up to look at Booth.

"Would you like to join me? I find that doing it alone isn't all that fun." She tried her best not to sound desperate for company. But she was.

"This is your first time and you already know it's not all that fun doing it alone?" Booth asked, smirking as he followed her to the couch, sitting down on the comfortable cushions.

"Company is nice." said Bones softly. "When it's desired. You know?"

Booth had an expression on his face that she couldn't read. She could sense a very strong emotion burning in his eyes, one that went beyond tolerance, or respect, or friendliness. It was more intense than the look in Sully's eyes. Her own emotion bubbled through the chambers of her mind; raw, unbridled hope.

"Yeah," he said finally. "I know. He picked up the pencil and pad and started doodling, while she went back to her bones, drawing mandibles, and skulls and fingers.

They drew in silence, neither looking up from their "work" to replay the CD; twice was enough.

But when Bones had her eyes glued to the pelvis she was sketching, Booth stole slight glances at her face before quickly sketching something vigorously. It had taken him as long as his auburn-haired friend to settle on what made him feel good, but now, at last, Booth was drawing eyes.

~end~

**A/N: Whew! I've had this one locked in the vault of ideas for YEARS, thank goodness it's out there now. YAY!**


End file.
